Impact of personal cultural orientations and moral potency on self-employment intentions: the moderating role cognitive styles

Abstract

Self-employment presents a viable work opportunity for the unemployed. However, not all unemployed individuals are attracted to self-employment. Based on the assumptions of the situated metacognition model of entrepreneurial mind-set and theory of planned behaviour, we explain why unemployed individuals may evaluate self-employment as an attractive opportunity for career progression. Using a sample of 227 unemployed young people from East Africa, we examine the interactional effects of cognitive style, personal cultural orientation and moral potency. Our findings show that unemployed young individuals with an adaptive cognitive style have higher self-employment intentions compared to their counterparts with intuitive or analytic styles. Moderation analyses showed that the effects of risk aversion and moral potency on self-employment intentions are conditioned by cognitive styles. Practical implications of these findings are discussed.